


The Trial

by Dracones95



Category: The Binding of Isaac (Video Game)
Genre: Animal Death, Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Drug Withdrawal, Gen, Hallucinations, Past Drug Addiction, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-15
Updated: 2015-11-15
Packaged: 2018-05-01 19:06:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5217305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dracones95/pseuds/Dracones95
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Isaac sets his mind on quitting the things that's caused him so much harm, all at once.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Trial

The wave of heat is what hits him first and awakes him from his state of dizziness and fatigue; he whips his head around, watching in horror as fire engulfs everything around him, turning the wood walls and ceiling into glowing ember. He shoots to his feet, covering his face with his sleeves; the fire spreads from the ceiling to his veins, fast, through his arms and rises to his throbbing head. The cold sweat leaves his aching skin clammy and sticky, giving him the urge to rip his clothes off him; he is fully aware of them touching him, scratching him like sand paper.

What exactly was it that went horribly wrong so fast was a mistery to him. Just a few weeks ago that place was paradise; serenity, peace. A place to get away from himself, from Mom, from everyone and everything that's ever hurt him. But then he stopped. He stopped swallowing his drugs all too suddenly, and he thought, somehow, in his madness, that he could live with not seeing that place ever again. Never feeling that warm safety it gave him again; a coin purse filled with red, blue and yellow capsules found its way into the river. Perhaps it was his fault; he shouldn't have cast them away like that, so brusquely, but the desire for normalcy and his chemically rotten brain pushed him to throw them as hard as he could and not even watch them sink to the bottom.

And now he wishes he had thrown himself too into the mass of water, as the usually empty basement turns into hell around him; he winces and jumps when the timber framing moans and creaks, licked by thousands of flaming tongues. He knows what will happen if he lingers; he forces himself to take a step towards what looks like a door-shaped figure through the thick smoke. Coughing and spluttering doesn't help his dry throat and the pain in his back, where his lungs should have been; neither does the ash that gets into his eyes and makes him rub at his eyes with his dirty hands until they start tearing up and he can no longer keep them open. Panic takes over him and he backs into the fire, scorching the fabric of his shirt, which glues to his skin and boils it. In the blackness he sees his own severed head, eyes gouged out and leaking streams of blood from the empty sockets. He forces himself to open his eyes.

The background is a fiery red as he blinks out tears and struggles to see through the blur. The darkness scares him, it always had. He needs to get to that door; the only way out of this mess, it seems. Wooden beams start groaning under the weight of the ceiling; he watches one crack right in the middle, bending slowly outwards. If he doesn't run, it would crush him, kill him, and end it. He ponders his options. Sure, he wants whatever is causing this to end, but is this how he wants it to end?

'Are you sure you want me to die?' A tiny voice inside his head that sounds so much like his own questions him. He's suddenly out of his body and gazing from above at the pathetic looking, sad excuse of a human being he's become. 'Is this how you want to go? You're giving up now? You're giving her the satisfaction of knowing she destroyed you?' Mother's hand, ripped from her body at the wrist, comes for him; the scream that leaves his body is almost inhumane and he shuts his eyelids, seeking refuge into the once terrifying darkness. When he opens them again, it's gone. It's her fault he's like this. Hers.

Pieces of ember rain down around him, one of them catching his arm and burning through the flesh. He howls in pain and races towards the door, trying desperately to leave the fiery chaos behind. The door is right there, in front of him and he reaches for it and yanks it open. Water bursts out the open space, putting out the fire and throwing him back into the basement he wants so much to leave and never see again; long gone was the safety it gave him. No longer somewhere he can take shelter; it was furious at him for giving up on it so nonchalantly, without much of a warning. He wanted to lock it away and destroy it, but he should have known it won't go down without a fight. It scratches at him now like a cornered feral cat, determined to do as much damage as it can before it goes down for good. Maybe even deal the lethal blow.

It floods, fast, water pooling around his knees, his waist and finally his chest, gripping it tightly; the pressure constricts his already damaged lungs to the point he can feel them being squeezed, dripping blood inside his body. He's lost his voice and from his open mouth nothing audible comes out.The water rises alarmingly, and he can't help but feel some sort of an irony. 

Suddenly, it turns green and murky; the surface ripples just a few meters away from him. There's something in the water there with him; his feet can't touch the bottom anymore and the terror of knowing something else was swimming inside paralyses him. He takes a mouthful of salty water that fills his churning stomach and clogs his intestines. Whatever it is in there it is close now.

Guppy's chopped up body surfaces in front of his eyes, a sharp knife still sticking out of its spine. For a split second, he doesn't react. The cat's eyes are still open, glassy and dead. Why? He yanks the knife out of the poor, innocent cat's body and the water drains just as fast as it almost drowned him, as if he pulled the plug in the bathroom. The blade is clean and shiny, unlike anything else filthy and broken he has seen in there, including himself.

'You coward. Can't kill me yourself.' He snarls viciously at no one in particular. Somehow, he feels relieved; feels as if he still has control over it. The cold metal smiles at him incitingly, however; without thinking, he drags the cutting egde across his wrist. The slit gapes open and fat, blue spiders and flies crawl out of the flesh; startled, he drops the knife and it impales itself into the floor to the hilt. The insects swarm around him like a halo, making a maddening sound and blocking his vision completely.

Without a warning, he's back in his bed, gasping for air and sweating through his clothes; he rubs the soft material of his duvet between his fingers, satisfied to find it was real. He smiled despite the dull ache in his chest. He had won the first, and the hardest round.


End file.
